Author's Note: I didn't particularly care if there was, or was not, an actual high-rise apartment complex in Trenton overlooking the Delaware when I planned the location for the 'Aurelia Arms', because that's where I always wanted it to be, regardless. Turns out, however, there's actually a real-life high-rise in almost the exact spot I imagined. Specifically it's located at 333 West State St, Trenton.

It's called the Carteret Arms in real-life (even though the town of Carteret is about 50 miles up the interstate) and it is, apparently, a very rough apartment complex.

Not quite as dangerous as the Aurelia Arms, maybe, but a contender.

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"Dog and Butterfly"

Trenton, New Jersey – 1984

He couldn't get out right away.

He had to sit there for a moment, his fingers absently caressing the worn leather of his steering wheel. He drew slow, regular breaths through his nose. Heartless came on the radio right before he switched the ignition off, and that made him smile. He let the Wilson sisters' vocals and guitar soothe him a bit, his heartbeat falling into cadence with the bass.

It took a lot to scare Noirbarret. That much was true.

It took even more, however, to paralyze him to the point of indecisiveness.

And, at least for the time he listened to that song, Noirbarret was indecisive.

When he'd barged into Medici's nearly-empty home and demanded to know everything Medici knew about Carlin Gay the older man at first thought Noirbarret had lost his mind. To challenge Carlin Gay, he reminded the younger man, was to challenge everything Carlin Gay had built up around herself.

"A king between rooks," Noirbarret had derisively said.

"A queen," Medici replied, shaking his head, voice subdued. "Queen of fucking Hearts— if you'll excuse the vulgarity— and much worse. I called Penance Cameron a 'monster' once, do you remember? I don't have a word to describe what Carlin Gay is."

Noirbarret did, however. He had two, in fact:

'Hungry', and 'desperate'.

Those, at least, were weaknesses.

"Know thy enemy," Noirbarret smiled ruefully as he shut off the car's engine, stowed his revolver in the glove box, and then stepped out onto the street. He looked back at the passenger's seat and his umbrella. Right now he longed for the feel of that umbrella handle more than he ever had.

All the same he slammed the door and walked off without it.

Across the road the Delaware river carved the state line. Bright sunshine bounced off the water in ecstatic ripples; he thought he could see a faint rainbow rising in the air. It all might as well have been a black cat in his path, because he saw no comfort, or luck, in the lovely morning's light.

He approached a high-rise apartment complex, all girded in scaffolding and much of it shrouded in drop cloths. The building's color— or at least what parts of it were painted— was a light amber blend, hewing closer to deep orange than gold. A construction fence blocked off most of the grounds around the building, leaving what would be a large parking lot to isolate the structure from its neighbors, all of which were far more modest buildings.

Noirbarret passed a gigantic poster— faded and soot-covered— plastered over a fence near the building's entryway. It showed a garish mock-up of the building's supposed final-product, along with bold art-deco text providing a vague, far-away completion date. Under that was this gem of a tagline:

"Aurelia Arms: The place for young living, and for the young at heart!"

It took a lot to scare Noirbarret and— God's honest truth— Noirbarret was scared.

But still, that text did make him laugh.

He walked under the safety awning and through the lobby door which was, of course, unlocked. He expected that much: to be expected. Gay was no good to him, after all, if she couldn't manage that much.

As he walked across the dun lobby floor, dress heels clacking like a metronome, he thought about the other side of the equation: know thyself. Noirbarret knew, of course, that his own weakness was 'obsession', and that it was a weakness.

Medichi was able to piece together why Noirbarret was suddenly so interested in Carlin Gay, of course. The 'dissatisfaction' Noirbarret had previously shown (and that smashed lead crystal glass) made far more sense, he supposed. Medici could divine enough to guess that Penance was still alive, and that Noirbarret was now so obsessed with recapturing him that he was willing to make a deal with the devil.

Well, not the 'devil', maybe. Maybe it was something that truly didn't have a name.

Maybe 'Queen of Hearts' would do, after all.

Medici, of course, found the whole idea quite 'insane'.

That made Noirbarret think of the ghetto trash brat, and what she'd told him during their little 'chat': Noirbarret should know how 'God-damed fucking insane' he really is.

How out of control he was.

Again, even as he crossed the cheap stone floor of the lobby and approached the front desk, Noirbarret had to chuckle. His laugh echoed in the dark and dusty lobby.

"Mmm-mmm," Noirbarret shook his head, whispering to himself. "No, little chicken-shit. I'm in control."

And if he wasn't exactly in control at the moment, well, he soon would be.

The front desk itself was empty but along the far side of the lobby, tucked away in a corner, a well-coiffed man in an impeccable gray wool suit typed away at a computer, standing in a squat little kiosk. Behind him a small banner trumpeted the 'Monarch Real Estate Group', and beneath that were pictures of what Noirbarret assumed were other Monarch properties.

The slick-looking man ignored Noirbarret entirely until he was within about five feet of him, at which point he looked up from the monitor with a friendly and polite grin, flashing some of the straightest, whitest teeth Noirbarret had ever seen.

"A very good morning to you, sir," his voice was just as silky and oily as his hair. "Were you interested in learning about the Aurelia? We're not quite pre-leasing, yet, so I can't put the 'hard sell' on you, unfortunately," the man gave Noirbarret a sly wink and a couple 'finger guns'. "However I'd be happy to provide you with some brochures about the property, and perhaps other fine Monarch locations you might be interested in."

Noirbarret scowled at the smarmy display, suddenly bearing a strong urge to knock out each and every perfect tooth in the man's head. Instead he pulled out his ID.

"No, this building is the one that interests me, slick. Me and the boys down at the office, at least. Eh, that's a lie, I suppose. Truth be told they're not really interested at all; they didn't even want to make the trip with me. Lazy oafs, really. Oh, but I did leave 'em your number, if they should have to get a hold of me while I'm here. Hope that was alright..."

That oily, sycophantic look briefly faltered on the man's face, but not for long. He made a quick recovery.

"Well, uh, officer—"

"Agent."

The man let a small, amused huff escape his nose; Noirbarret could see something else buried under that genial face.

Something that wanted to do much more than knock out all his teeth.

"'Agent', sorry. What possible interest could the FBI have in a half-finished apartment complex?"

Noirbarret smiled even deeper than the man.

"Y'know, that's just what a bunch of people in the neighborhood asked me when I quizzed 'em on this tower. They say it's been 'unfinished' for quite a number of years, now. Far too many, it seems like."

That'd be an odd thing to say in regular conversation. Who cares what a bunch of local rubes think about a construction project? But then that wasn't the piece of information Noirbarret was trying to impart to the man.

Judging by a second microscopic break in the man's façade he got the intended message.

Noirbarret hadn't dared carry his umbrella or his revolver into this place; that was guaranteed death. No, he hadn't brought a sword.

He did think to carry a 'shield', though, and now he'd shown it off.

Whether it was enough to save him, or not, would probably be decided in the next minute, or so.

And in any event he didn't feel like waiting.

Norbarret leaned on the counter, glaring at the man with his jet-black eyes.

"FBI's not interested in this shit-hole in the slightest, but I would be..." he looked to one side, deciding that he should at least be very careful with his words. "I would be most obliged, and honored, if the great lady of the house could spare a brief moment of her time and deign to have a word with someone... not so great."

The man looked up over Noirbarret's shoulder as he finished speaking, and he knew this was it. He started to turn, intending to merely spread his hands and stand nice and proper as the deed was done. Would it be bullets? He hoped so. At least not blades, since in the heat of the moment they might decide to lop his head off right here in the lobby.

Turns out it was neither.

Halfway into his turn Noirbarret's brain exploded with light and noise— like a TV losing the signal— while fire and ice raged over his skin. His whole body burned, but in the burning were sharp stabs of pain, like icicles impaling him. He collapsed to the floor in a squirming heap, frothing at the lips, barely enough time to twist his eyes up and see a black stun baton held over his head before its two cruel metal tips were rammed into his neck.

Then the next barrage of electricity hit his body.

He was out for less than a minute, certainly, but long enough for his wrists and ankles to be cuffed. Two new men, clad in identical suits to the first, held him up on either side, keeping him in a kneeling position as the first man stood before him and consulted a radio. He spoke a gibberish, alien tongue, although Noirbarret could guess the language. One phrase caught his ear that confirmed this:

"Do-bhàis".

Noirbarret smirked, spitting on the ground and lapping at the froth around his lips.

"Yeah," he interrupted the radio conversation. "I'm a 'Do-bhàis'. I got no 'shroud' on me. And I'm not Pinnochio, either: if I disappear, here, then you'll have the FBI crawling so far up your ass that they could give you a dental exam. Not that you need it, pearly-boy..."

The man scowled at this. Again he barked some guttural words into the radio. The reply took some time. It was soft, and the radio pressed tight to the man's ear so Noirbarret couldn't quite hear it. The man glared down at Noirbarret with awful, hate-filled eyes.

He really wouldn't get the best deal on a condo from him right now, he thought.

"What is it, exactly, that you want, Shroudless One?" Gone was the perfect, unassumingly professional New York accent; now his speech was harsh and polluted with a type of brogue.

Noirbarret ignored the man's disdain and anger; now the tables were turned. He made a polite smile, again licking at the foam on his mouth, and he even bowed his head, for added 'respect'.

"I would be most obliged, and honored, if the great lady of the house could—"

The man didn't wait; he cut Noirbarret off with a curt, sharp command to the men holding him on either side. Noirbarret was roughly dragged behind the front desk and taken to a service elevator. It was a tight fit, and he was kept on his knees.

The elevator wobbled and shook as it rose slowly up the shaft. The one ugly bulb in the ceiling cast pale light on the compartment. The man standing before Noirbarret silently took out what looked like a lipstick tube and unscrewed it.

Noirbarret mockingly puckered his lips a few times, smirking.

"Could I use a touch-up, you think?"

The man's cold scowl never changed, not even as he pressed the tube to his own forehead and drew a quick, practiced line over it. He followed this with a wide pattern of complex streaks— dizzyingly fast— and seconds later his face was done up in an intricate set of patterns. The paint was blue, and the patterns unmistakably Celtic.

Now it was time for Noirbarret's façade to break, if only for a moment; he let himself swallow a small lump in his throat. If the man standing over him noticed, he ignored it.

Eventually the elevator stopped. Noirbarret didn't know which floor, but it had to be somewhere near the top. He was taken out into a dilapidated, half-finished hallway, the raw boards and planks still visible and the scent of untreated wood dominating all. It was just what one expected, based on how the outside of the place looked. They moved him through a random door further down the hall.

And beyond that door were things one didn't expect to see.

The passageway was decorated in immaculate Louis XIV style. The rich, creamy marble floor was flanked by intricately-carved stone columns rising up the entire two-story height of the passageway. The vaulted ceiling bore a massive fresco of a brilliant blue sky running its entire length. Rosy-cheeked, naked cherubs peeked out from the sides of the ceiling, laughing into the clouds, their stubby white wings outstretched. Along the walls hung massive classical paintings, and Noirbarret didn't have to guess that most, or likely all of them, were the genuine articles.

He was dragged through all this splendor, shoes screeching on the polished marble floor. The vulgar noise competed with sweet music piped through small speakers set at intervals in the walls: Glenn Gould delicately working through the Goldberg Variations. At a random door far, far down the corridor they stopped and the leading man knocked. A heavy bolt fell out of its lock and the door was opened. On the other side was another man, his face also done-up in the same kind of wild blue patterns as the first. They exchanged brief words in that guttural Gaelic speech and then Noirbarret was dragged inside.

Beyond that door were far less grand surroundings. Again the hallway was untreated, with exposed floorboards and bare walls, some with only the struts completed. A bank of windows on either side of the small hall were covered with translucent tarps; they gave the light a deep twilight-amber look, and it fell over the bare surroundings, exposed wiring, pipes, and dust-choked air like a sick haze.

Amusingly there were speakers here, too, piping that lithe piano music in from their spots in the ceiling corners.

"Would this be the 'Sunset Lounge'?" Noirbarret asked.

No one answered his jape. He was taken to the end of this sad little place, where beneath his feet the incomplete floor exposed an ugly-looking gas pipe junction. The green cap at the pipe crossing, with its bolts sticking out and a rusty cut beneath them, looked something like a frowning face; it stared up at him dumbly from the break in the floor.

"You guys sure this place is up to code?" Noirbarret smirked.

One of the men holding him rapped the back of his head, barking a curt command to be silent.

Directly around the corner from the end of the hall was a final door, this one hewn of very heavy-duty iron and painted an ugly red. The bolts holding it in its frame were as wide as two of Noirbarret's fingers, and when it squealed open on protesting hinges he guessed the thing was at least four inches thick.

The little room beyond reeked of mildew, disinfectants and certain other far less pleasant things. The only internal light came from a small red bulb dangling on a string. It hung over a large wooden table. The table had an odd consistency: the wood was rife with slash marks and stained deep to its pulpy core with an unpleasant crimson hue. Beside it a metal cart bore all manner of medical supplies and blades. Noirbarret took a second to come to his senses about what that wooden table actually was: it was a giant carving board.

And it wasn't a table.

It was an altar.

He didn't need to worry about being placed down on it, though; it was far too small to accommodate a grown man.

The wan red bulb barely illuminated the altar and a few feet beyond; all the real light in the room came from the far corner. A boarded up window (complete with thick metal bars) allowed a few stray beams of sunshine through large gaps in the boards, and the naked sunlight was ungodly bright in the darkness.

So bright that, at first, Noirbarret couldn't even tell there was a high-backed chair sitting in front of that window.

Nor that there was a body resting in it.

He was forced down before the chair, strong arms holding him fast. When he looked up he could only blink into the vulgar light coming through the window behind that figure in the chair; it turned them into a blurry shadow, ill-defined and impossible to make out.

A spoon clinked delicately in a teacup. The figure placed the cup on a small table beside the chair. The tea's smell was distinct from the horrid smells in this nightmarish room, and it was the only thing that kept him from vomiting right onto the floor.

Or the figure's shoes.

That, of course, wouldn't exactly be getting things off on the right foot, would it?

"Chamomile," he nodded with approval. "Does wonders for the nerves, doesn't it?"

The figure said nothing, not even moving their head an inch.

Noirbarret thought to fill the nervous pause.

"Heh. Y'know, maybe I'm the one that needs a little—"

"We are not well-met, churl."

The voice rebuking him was cold and severe, but even in its anger still soft and practiced. 'Queenly' would be what Noirbarret might call it.

He licked his lips, his face sagging apologetically.

"Uh... no, we're not. And I'm sorry about that. Truly. All I wanted— with all respect— was your attention."

The figure rested one thin arm on its armrest, setting its chin upon a well-poised fist. That made it look a little like The Thinker, and Noirbarret hoped to hell they were thinking, and not simply planning a very unpleasant fate for him.

"Only a fool demands the attention of Carlin Gay—"

"I've been called worse," Noirbarret's wry grin returned.

"—and whatever would such a fool seek my attention for in the first place?"

"It's something of a 'business proposition'."

The men holding Noirbarret down exchanged derisive chuckles at this, but that head framed in the harsh sunlight looked to each of them in turn, silencing them instantly.

"Regardless of the state of this building," the figure said, "I can assure you my operations' finances are, at the least, beyond your comprehension. Simply put: I've more money that I can realistically spend—"

"And it means nothing to you," Noirbarret interrupted. "That's not what I'm talking about, something as base as money. I'm talking about the only currency you do care about."

For a moment he thought about that small wooden altar behind him: its various stains and myriad knife-marks. Briefly he wanted to shiver, but he put that feeling out of his head as soon as it came up. A display of revulsion, after all, would be unwise.

"And what is it you offer?" The figure asked.

"An immortal child, of course. There can't be many of those left by now, can there? This one's moving up from Philadelphia, and I had him, briefly, right in my hands, but he escaped. He made a fool of me, to boot. Now I know this one; we've had our history. It's a sour one, I don't mind saying. Maybe I can't find him again; lightning doesn't strike twice, you know, but with your... 'abilities', perhaps together..."

Again the figure said nothing, not even moving its head an inch.

"They say you can sense the children among us," Noirbarret explained. "A little, at least. With my knowledge of this brat's brain and with your senses to back that up we can take him!"

A good twenty seconds passed before the figure spoke.

"A quickening is not a thing to be shared, even if it could be—"

"Mmm-mmm," Noirbarret shook his head, smiling with that same oily, snake-like smile he'd seen on the face of the man downstairs. "No, no quickening for me. It's enough just to see him again, face-to-face, one last time before you work your 'magic' on him. I want the brat to know who it was that caged him, right before he gets the axe."

The figure's head tilted slightly at this.

"What a beastly cruelty you have running through you, churl..."

Noirbarret's teeth went on edge; for a moment he thought to make a sarcastic comment about the little 'play-scape' sitting behind him but he thought better of it, instead trying to maintain at least some diplomacy.

"My offer, I think, is quite generous—"

"As generous as it is unwanted." The figure waved a hand, and instantly the men were hauling Noirbarret back up, dragging him back towards the door.

"Wait!" He barked.

The figure's voice never rose above that cold, practiced queenliness.

"If you ever come within a mile of the Aurelia Arms again, 'agent', I can promise you that the very last thing that will be removed from you— of all the things that are possible to remove— will be your head."

"I'm offering you an immortal boy! Practically for free! It's your bread and butter—"

"Surely you've heard what they say about 'free lunches', no? Frankly I wouldn't trust you to pour my tea, churl. The possibility of capturing some ordinary little immortal boy doesn't change—"

"Penance isn't ordinary!"

His scream was savage, angry, nothing like the pleadings he'd been making. It was also a far, far more vicious tone than he'd ever expect to use around the likes of Carlin Gay. But he couldn't help it; in that moment those words— her words— somehow struck him to his core, as if they were the most wounding things she could possibly say.

And when he bellowed his piece the shadowy figure's hand immediately came up, twisting about in a curt gesture; she spoke a few guttural words and the men holding Noirbarret released him.

"Nothing about Penance is ordinary!" He reiterated. "Nothing!"

The figure eventually rested its hand back on the armrest.

"'Penance', you say?"

Noirbarret rolled his eyes, still too enraged by the figure's words to pick up on their renewed interest.

"Penance Cameron, yeah. You're the one with the special 'powers', and you should know someone like Penance, being in the 'business' you are. And if you think he's 'ordinary' then maybe those powers aren't so up to snuff!"

The figure again barked a curt command, and suddenly Noirbarret remembered himself, and his current predicament. He flinched as one of the men came down beside him.

And then he blinked, confused, when that man unlocked his handcuffs. Another man did the same for his ankles.

He looked back up at the silhouetted figure, not daring to get off his knees.

"Perhaps there is 'business' we can do together after all, Mister..."

"Noirbarret. Connall Noirbarret."

"'Connall'," the figure mused. "The 'strong wolf', as they'd say across the sea. Are you a great predator, Agent Noirbarret?"

"I have my moments," he grumbled. "And just 'Connall' will do, if you'd like." He tried giving the figure another of those smarmy, snake-oil-salesman grins, but it was a thin and unsure thing. "And, uh, do you go by 'Carlin', or do you prefer 'Lady Gay', or the like?"

The figure leaned forward, eclipsing the vulgar light from the window with her head. She was a mess of wrinkled flesh and bulging veins. She held her toothpick frame regally in that ratty wing-backed chair, and her dirty white hair was impeccably bundled in an ornate braid running down behind her back. Dangling from her neck, suspended on a chain of braided silver, was a small pendant in the form of golden butterfly wings.

Her elderly eyes— colored the palest blue imaginable—looked out from the gnarled flesh around her sockets. There was no hint of 'blindness' in either of them, despite the empty, spent color. They gave off quite the opposite impression, in fact. This was a woman who could see you, yes.

This was, in fact, a woman who could possibly see through you, at that.

And when she spoke it was in that practiced, queenly voice.

"'Nicnevin'," she said, "will do nicely."